The Order 1886: Dev Explains Why The Game Looks So Good; Cover System Is Different From Gears of War

The Order 1886 is an upcoming PlayStation 4 exclusive from Ready at Dawn. This is their first major project on the PlayStation 4.

If you have seen the recent gameplay of The Order : 1886, you might be impressed by its graphics. The game almost has a CGI-like quality to its graphics and it all runs in real-time on the PlayStation 4. The gameplay and the cutscene graphics are indistinguishable. Ready at Dawn recently talked about the technique that they used to make it look so good.

On gaming forum NeoGAF, one of The Order 1886 dev responded to a question by a user, explaining the graphical effects seen in the recent PSX demo.

It’s a combination of a ton of elements. I’ll break out a couple:

1) Lens
We stripped away the ability for lighting and FX to author full screen effects that are normal determined by a camera lens.

We created lens profiles/templates that set:

Lens curvature
Vignetting
Etc,

Both the gameplay cameras and cinematic cameras use these lenses templates.

2) We use depth of field for both in-game and cinematics. For the cinematics we animated the reference depth and “focus pull” as if it was a movie. For gameplay we set the reference depth based on what you are doing — in cover we pull it in to further emphasize your limited visibility.

The developer also explained the cover system mechanics stating that while they have used Gears of War as a starting point, they have made several changes to the cover system, adding a lot of their own stuff as well.

Also I’d urge everyone to take a closer look at Gears of War and then look back at our cover system. While we love GOW and used that as a starting point, we did do some subtle but significant changes.

Our cameras are much closer, much more saving private ryan feel. In our game, when you’re in cover, it looks and feels like you are in cover. We have a peek mechanic, where you can look over or around cover to get a better view (just stick in said direction), this is to help offset that your visibility is hampered while you are in cover.

Also we have a soft cover mechanic (that kicks in once you have entered cover), similar to The Last of Us in that once in cover you can just move/stick off without needing to hit the enter cover button — which can allow for smoother transitions when shifting sides or just going in and out quickly.

We went with a hybrid system as we wanted to preserve the ability to quickly scramble into cover via a button press (something you can’t do in The Last of Us) but once in it’s super easy to shift/change cover.

So while The Order: 1886 cover system might appear similar at first, it has plenty of neat additions that makes it stand out from similar third person shooters.

What do you have to say to the remarks made by the developer? Let us know in the comments below.

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I think this game could be the best looking, best playing game in the world.. give you a BJ and make you a ham sandwich and people would still find something to complain about.

Danilo Azhar

its pretty much like gears of war cover system. Plus the camera system been that clsoe is bad for tps. It elad to bad camera angle and will hinder yoru movement and attack when you get sawrmed with enemies

Russell Gorall

We compare it to a game, and not a movie and you hate it? Take what you can get.

Manoj Varughese

take my money already!

Lee Cox

it does look pretty, i hope the story is just as pretty

Guest

And I hope your pretty with a pretty story.

Richard Terry Clark

Looks pretty RAD….

Nintendo Fan 4 Lif3

LOL I knew somebody was gonna use this pun at some point. I hope story measures up to the awesome stuff they showed us.